Scottish government response to "reimagining secure care" report

8. Actions in Phase 1: Capacity Restoration and Reinforcement (2025-26 – 2027-28)

Phase 1 will focus on responding to immediate pressures facing secure care, ensuring no child is left without appropriate, safe and trauma-informed care. Actions will set the foundations for change, and will include:

8.1 Joint Action Plan – Scottish Government and COSLA (Autumn 2025)

To underpin our response to the RSC report, the Scottish Government will develop a joint action plan with COSLA. This will provide further detail regarding timescales, dependencies and action owners. This will take place in the context of a new National Social Work Agency and will be delivered working in concert with the new Social Work Scotland Policy and Practice Adviser.

8.2 Secure Care Contingency Action Plan (2025-26)

Whilst a number of secure care contingency actions have been delivered this year, others remain in the early stages of implementation, and others will require further scoping.

It is essential that the Scottish Government – and wider partners – continue to prioritise the secure care contingency planning as an immediate and foundational step.

The Promise Scotland has been clear that there is a careful balance to be struck between ensuring sufficient capacity and overproviding. The Scottish Government’s focus is capacity restoration, ensuring sufficient capacity to meet Scotland’s needs. There is a pressing need to stabilise existing services through robust contingency planning that restores capacity, ensures continuity and builds long-term resilience. Future change cannot come at the expense of meeting current, urgent needs.

That is why, in phase 1 of our delivery, the focus will continue to be on delivering the secure care contingency actions, aimed at restoring capacity and resilience. Subject to the necessary approval and registration, proposed actions include:

• The establishment of a further 4-bedded national contingency resource to restore lost capacity across the secure estate.
• The construction of 2-3 future-proofed 4-bedded houses in Kibble to restore capacity and support a pathway to meeting the asks of the Promise.
• Establishment of a new fully-funded emergency contingency resource providing intensive, wrap-around support when secure accommodation is unavailable.

The Scottish Government will also continue discussions with secure providers and partners to consider and explore other capacity restoration actions. This will include opportunities to strengthen preventative measures, alternatives to secure care and transitions back to communities.

8.3 Capital Funding (2025-26)

The Scottish Government is backing the response to ‘reimagining secure care’ with £1.5 million capital funding for secure providers in 2025-26.

This will support secure providers to prepare for further care and justice reforms, and future proof their services and campuses to prepare for a ‘reimagined’ secure care system.

8.4 Consultation (2025-26)

The Scottish Government acknowledges that ‘reimagining’ secure care is not simply a matter of policy reform or upgrades to existing campuses, but demands a profound cultural and systemic shift in how we support Scotland’s most vulnerable children. To realise this, consultation must be central to our approach.

We are committed to a national conversation that invites input from across communities – particularly from those with direct experience. As recognised by The Promise Scotland, consultation presents an opportunity to co-design solutions.

Consultation will focus on key aspects of the future vision, including:

• The future purpose and function of secure care, including routes into and transitions from secure care.

• Secure care funding and commissioning models.
• The proposed “flex secure” model, and how it could be tailored to Scotland’s unique context.
• The role of community-based alternatives to secure accommodation and how they could interface with secure settings.
• The development of aftercare, transitions, and reintegration support for children leaving secure care.

8.5 Prevention, Early Intervention and Alternatives to Secure Care

Our approach to supporting our most vulnerable children must be holistic – focused on early intervention, preventative measures and effective transitions, as set out in our Youth Justice Vision, 2024-26.

In practice, these interventions are often provided by a partnership of universal and targeted, statutory and voluntary sector services. Examples of community support might include a referral to the Scottish Government funded Interventions for Vulnerable Youth (IVY) service based at Kibble. This national service uses a multi-disciplinary, tiered approach to provide risk assessment, formulation and management for high risk young people aged up to age 19, who present with complex needs and high risk. The Scottish Government is providing funding of up to £308k to support IVY services in 2025-26.

The service supports those at risk of requiring secure accommodation as well as those detained in secure. In 2024-25, the service supported 93 children who have multiple and complex needs.

The Scottish Government has also implemented a comprehensive and multi-faceted approach to tackling youth violence, including knife crime, focusing on prevention and early intervention, through education and community engagement. The Scottish Government has invested more than £6m since 2023 to take forward a range of actions outlined in the Violence Prevention Framework. This includes increasing funding to the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and Medics Against Violence to allow them to undertake a range of interventions, working with multiple partners, including and Youthlink Scotland’s No Knives Better Lives.”

The previous Divert Theme 3 group of the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce (SOCT) published the ‘Criminal Exploitation: Guidance for Practitioners’ in June 2023. The guidance aims to maximise Scotland’s co-ordinated and joined up response to all exploited individuals, making it easier for practitioners across Scotland to support children and vulnerable adults who have been victims of exploitation.

In February 2025, the SOCT agreed actions to develop a shared approach to disrupt child criminal exploitation, including closer alignment with activity under the updated Human Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy. This will support more coordinated delivery of shared aims to tackle all forms of child exploitation.

Early help and support is crucial in preventing families from reaching crisis in the first place. That is why the Scottish Government has increased funding for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships through the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding from £32m to £38m in 2025-26 and 2026-27. To ensure holistic family support is available to our communities, to help families thrive and prevent crisis.

8.6 National Placement Co-ordination Function (2025-28)

The Scottish Government will work in partnership with secure providers and commissioning authorities to explore the potential for the National Social Work Agency’s remit to include a new national secure accommodation placement and co-ordination function. Consideration will be given to resource, remit, functions and costs.

As well as providing a more robust professionalised and permanent oversight and monitoring service, this approach could potentially address some long standing issues relating to data, regional disparities, co-ordination and resource efficiency.

8.7 Supporting the Workforce

Ensuring a sustainable, skilled and supported workforce is fundamental to the future of secure accommodation and other care settings where children with complex needs require care and protection. Professionals in these environments are tasked with managing complex needs, implementing trauma-informed care, and providing stability to vulnerable children.

Recognising this, the Scottish Government is taking a number of actions to support the sustainability and retention of the secure accommodation workforce. This includes:

• a commitment to continuing to pay for up to 16 beds across the secure estate in 2025-26 and 2026-27, to maintain capacity and to provide a level of financial security and resilience to the secure providers.
• a commitment to raise the status of children’s social care as a profession, which is key to delivering quality care to vulnerable children.
• a further investment of £1.4 million in 2025-26 to the secure care workforce as part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to Fair Work in children’s social care. This investment will continue to address recruitment and retention challenges in the sector and contribute to its sustainability now and in the future.
• supporting improved implementation of national policy informed by frontline practice, and oversight of social work and the issues affecting the workforce through the establishment of the NSWA by April 2026.
• bringing both national and local government together to address workforce issues through the establishment of the Scottish Social Work Partnership.
• uplifting the value of the social work postgraduate bursary administered by the Scottish Social Services Council to £11,000 per year of an eligible qualifying course, from academic year 2025-26.
• working at pace with industry leaders and Skills Development Scotland to introduce a Graduate Apprenticeship, a new work-based professional social work qualification for academic year 2025-26.

8.8 Piloting, testing and evaluation (2025-28)

To support the planned programme of engagement and consultation, the Scottish Government will also pilot, where possible, and rigorously evaluate, the effectiveness of models proposed in the RSC report. This will allow:

• Evidence-based decision making and measuring impact – piloting will enable the collection of data on the effectiveness of new models, ensuring decisions are based on outcomes, rather than theoretical assumptions.
• Identifying and addressing challenges – piloting will enable the identification of challenges and risks, and enable refinement before broader implementation. This will also inform the feasibility of scaling up, or decommissioning based on an assessment of risk and impact.
• Stakeholder engagement – piloting will enable us to test the views of children, practitioners and communities.

We will also explore opportunities to work with the professional networks and organisations to better understand the condition of our secure care estate to ensure it’s sustainability and long term viability given the crucial service these provide for our children.

8.9 Explore a New National Funding and Commissioning Model (2025-28)

The Scottish Government will work in partnership with Scotland Excel, secure providers and commissioning authorities to consult on and co-design a new national commissioning model that reflects our shared aspirations for the future of secure care. This process will consider potential changes in funding and commissioning arrangements to better serve the needs of children across Scotland.

8.10 Data collection and analysis (2025-28)

The Scottish Government is committed to improving data collection and analysis to better understand the needs of children requiring secure care, and to inform future planning and policy development.

As recognised by The Promise Scotland, it is important for us to better understand the routes into secure care, and assess the effectiveness of community-based alternatives and preventative measures.

8.11 Secure Care Transport (2025-28)

The Scottish Government will review existing and future secure care transport arrangements to ensure the provision is fit for purpose to meet the current and future needs of children.